A Review of Drought Indices and their Performance

Document Type : Review Article

Authors

• Mirhasan Miryaghoubzadeh ¹
• seyed amin khosravi ²
• Mostafa Zabihi ³

¹ Urmia University

² Urmia University, Iran

³ Tarbiat Modares University, Iran

Abstract

Drought is an inevitable natural phenomenon and a disaster that should be considered without the possibility of prevention, but this phenomenon can be managed and organised. In general, from a climate perspective, drought represents a type of deviation from the average condition. Drought types include agricultural, hydrological, and meteorological, where meteorological drought occurs more than the agricultural and hydrological drought types. To assess quantitatively and qualitatively of the drought phenomenon, some indicators called drought indices are commonly used in the world. In this study, considering the importance of drought, eight rainfall indices namely Deciles Precipitation Index (DPI), Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), Percent of Normal Precipitation Index (PNPI), Surface Water Storage Index (SWSI), Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI), Crop Moisture Index (CMI), Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI), and Rainfall Anomaly Index (RAI) were evaluated. The results of this study indicate that the SPI index has a high comparative advantage for drought monitoring. Based on rainfall and potential evapotranspiration, the RDI index is more sensitive to climate change variables than the rainfall-driven SPI index. Also, the PNPI indicator is a dysfunctional method for estimating drought, and drought prediction will have many errors due to this index. The CMI index is also limited to use only in the growing season. Also, it cannot determine the long duration of drought.

Keywords

• drought
• Drought indicators
• Top index

---

References

انصافی‏ مقدم، ط. 1386. ارزیابی چند شاخص خشکسالی اقلیمی و تعیین مناسب‏ترین شاخص در حوضه دریاچه نمک. مجله تحقیقات مرتع و بیابان ایران، 14(2): 277-281

ایران‌صالحوند، م.م. و مومنی، م. 1392. پهنه‏ بندی خشکسالی با شاخص ‏های (DI, ZCI , PNI , SPI, SPI) و دنباله ‏ها در شهرهای خوزستان در محیط GIS. فصلنامه جغرافیا و برنامه‌‏ریزی شهری چشم‏انداز زاگرس، 52(3): 35-37.

حسنی‏ها، ح. و صالحی، ز. ١٣٧٩. بررسی وضعیت خشکسالی بر اسـاس تعـدادی از شـاخص‏‏‏‌هـای آمـاری در اسـتان زنجـان. مجموعه مقالات اولین کنفرانس ملی مقابله با کم آبی و خشکسالی. دانشگاه شهید باهنرکرمان، ١: 17-27.

ﺧﻠﯿﻠﯽاﻗﺪم، ن.، ﻣﺴﺎﻋﺪی، اﻟﻒ. و ﻟﻄﯿﻔﯽ، ن. 1386. ﺑﺮرﺳﯽ ﺧﺸﮑﺴﺎﻟﯽ و روﻧﺪ وﻗﻮع آن در اروﻣﯿﻪ. ﻣﺠﻠﻪ ﻋﻠﻮم ﮐﺸـﺎورزی و ﻣﻨﺎﺑﻊ ﻃﺒﯿﻌﯽ، 14(5): 146-156.

سرحدی، ع.، سلطانی، س. و مدرس، ر. 1388. ارزیابی و تحلیل گستره خشکسالی در استان اصفهان بر پایه چهار شـاخص مهـم خشکسالی. مجله منابع طبیعی ایران، 61(4): 570-575.

Barua S., Ng A.W.M. and Perera B.J.C. 2011. Comparative Evaluation of Drought Indices: A Case Study on The Yarra River Catchmentin Australia. Journal of Water ResourcesPlanning and Management, 137(2): 215-226.

Bordi I. and Sutera A. 2004. Drought variability and its climatic implications. Global and Planetary Change, 40(2): 115-127.

Gibbs W.J. and Maher J.V. 1967. Rainfall Deciles as Drought Indicators. Bureau of Meteorology.

Commonwealth of Australia, Melbourne, Australia, 48: 84Pages.

Guttman N.B. 1998. Comparing the palmer drought index and the standardized precipitation index. J. the Amer. Water Resour, 34(1): 121-131.

Mackee B.T., Nolan Dooesken J. and Kleist J. 1995. Drought monitoring with multiple timescales. 9thConference on Applied Climatology. 15-20. January, Boston, Massachusetts.

MacKee T.B., Doesken N.J. and Kleist J. 1993. The Relationship of Drought Frequency and Duration to Time Scales. Paper Presented at 8th Conference on Applied Climatology. American Meteorological Society, Anaheim, CA.

Maeda E.E., Wiberg D.A. and Pellikka P.K.E. 2010. Estimating refrence evapotranspiration using sensing empirical models in a region with limited data availability in Kenya. Applied Geography, 31(1): 251-258.

Meyer S.J. and Hubbard K.G. 1995. Extending the crop-specific drought index to soybean. 9th Conference on Applied Climatology. Dallas, TX. Meteorol. Soc., Boston.

Moreira E.E., Coelho C.A., Paulo A.A., Pereira L.S. and Mexia J.T. 2008. SPI-based Drought Category Prediction Using Loglinear Models. Journal of Hydrology, 354: 116-130.

Mostafavi Darani S.M., Khoshhal Dastjerdi J., Parandeh A. and Ghatrehsamani M. 2011. Drought monitoring in Esfahan province (IRAN) by comparison of Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) & econnaissance DroughtIndex(RDI). EMS Annual Meeting Abstracts, 8: 211-229.

NDMC. 2006. What is drought?, National Climatic Data Center. (accessed 22 April 2011).

Palmer W.C. 1965. Meteorological Drought. Research Paper No 45, office of climatology, U.S. Department of Commerce Weather Bureau, Washington, D.C.

Palmer W.C. 1968. Keeping track of crop moisture conditions, nationwide: The new crop moisture index. Weatherwise, 21(4): 156–161.

Panu U.S. and Sharma T.C. 2002. Challenge in Drought Research: Some Perspectives and Future Directions, Hydrological Science Journal, 47: 19-30.

Shafer B. and Dezman L. 1982. Development of a Surface Water Supply Index (SWSI) to assess the severity of drought conditions in snowpack runoff areas. Proceedings of the Western Snow Conference. (p. 164–175)

Smakhtin V.U. and hughes D.A. 2004. Review, Automated Estimation and Analyses of Drought Indices in south Asia. International Wter Management Institute. Colombo, Sri Lanka..

Tallaksen L.M. and Van Lanen H.A.J. 2004 Hydrological drought. Processes and estimation methods for streamflow and groundwater. Volume 48. Development in Water Science. Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 48:

Tsakiris G., Pangalou D. and Vangelis H. 2004. Regional drought assessment based on the Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI). Water Resource Manage, 21(5): 821–833.

Van Loon A.F. 2013. On the propagation of drought. Wageningen University.

Van-Rooy M.P. 1965. A Rainfall anomaly index (RAI) independent of time and space. Notos, 14: 43-48.

Wilhite D.A. and Glantz M.H. 1985. Understanding The Drought Phenomenon, The Role of Definitions. Water International, 10(3): 111-120.

Willeke G., Hosking J.R.M., Wallis J.R. and Guttman N.B. 1994. The National Drought Atlas. Institute for Water Resources Report, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Zehtabian G.h., Karimi K., Nakhee Nejadfard S., Mirdashtvand M. and Khosravi H. 2013. ComparabilityAnalyses of the SPI and RDIMeteorological Drought Indices in South Khorasan province in Iran. International Journal of Advanced Biological and Biomedical Research, 1(9): 981-992.